TOPIC: PC Anywhere Bandwidth

Hey everybody, I work with PC Anywhere and NetOp alot at work and the bandwidth is very critical in getting my job done faster and more efficiently. Does anybody have any ideas to increase the speed of bring up PC Anywhere. (For example I thought about dropping the res. on the remote computer and to remove all color backgrounds) for quicker loading. Just wondering if anybody has any ideas. When I run PC Anywhere I feel like I am back in the day on my 486.

Hi Zippy, could you give us an idea of what connection you use for the PCAnywhere connection ? Accordingly you could do a little bit of general connection tweaking.

Otherwise if you're a network admin then you could probably find some way to implement QoS (Quality of Service) to give your remote access traffic higher priority.

Cutting down the display res and background might help you out, you mentioned that your machine feels like a 486.. are you sure that you're experiencing a bandwidth problem and not just a general slowdown of your pc due to running the app ?

I used to run PCAnywhere quite a bit. I used to have similar problems running on all kinds of machines. We used to have some servers that would freeze while I was connected. The problem happened to be our Video card. It only had 512k of memory on it. It turns out that PCAnywhere will cause problems if it doesn't have enough memory. If you have a small amount of memory on your Video Card, increasing the RAM may help.

Remember, that PCAnywhere is sending pixel data (lots of it all the time). The processing is going to take a little time. I ran this on my 200 MHz portable with OK response time (obviously not as good as a direct connection).

I worked for Symantec for a while; one of my many products I supported was PCA (3 years).

PCA is very resource intensive; it requires a good system for peek performance (including good connectivity regardless how it’s connected). To help speed up or make faster you need to insure:

* You have the latest drivers for video and transport device (modem, NIC, etc...)

* You have no extra garbage running in the back ground (Kill all temporarily using CTRL-ALT-DEL, keeping only what is required to keep Windows from crashing...). High resource values are what’s needed.

* Kill all snazzy background pictures, etc, not needed. This will help speed up the refresh rate.

* Try turning down the video acceleration of the video card, this will affect the performance of the computer in whole. You will need to restart the computer, yes even XP! If this works, then update your video drivers (make sure its for your card and OS, if you cant find for your OS then closes to it, I can not stress that enough!! Do NOT use generic drivers installed by Windows if you can help it!) Or replace the video card.

* In PCA there is a setting under TOOLS/OPTIONS to set to COMPATIBILITY MODE. This option is only in versions 9.x - 10.x.
If PCA is already in Compatibility Mode and will NOT go back to Default Mode, this is telling you PCA has an issue with your video card and instead of blue screening it has safe guarded the system. Update drivers or replace the card is the only fix.

* Turn OFF encryption in PCA, encryption WILL slow down connections by as much as 50%!

* If DOS is what you’re trying to use please keep in mind DOS is NOT supported nor guaranteed to work in ver 10.x - 11.x, you will need to have 9.2.1 connecting to a 9.x or less for DOS to work. 9.2.1 Is only supported on Windows 2K with SP2 ONLY! May work with higher service packs but it was NOT tested! For Windows ME you will also need to ensure your running 9.2.1.

* Windows Terminal Services and PCA do not work nor are they supported; you will need to disable Terminal Services.

* Wireless connection of ANY type is NOT supported or guaranteed to work, period!! Latency issue is what will kill you, PCA needs 200ms or less to work, that’s what Symantec guarantees it to perform at. Check your Ping / Tracert times from the Host to the Remote and visa versa. 200ms is the magic number. Any "*" Asterisks, unreachable, etc.., fix your network issues first.

PCA has known issues with Intel, ATI and Savage video cards.
The worse being Intel and the rest in the above order.
If you have Intel don’t fight the cause any more, you'll lose, get a different card.

This is NOT to say PCA will NOT work with these cards, I'm just saying these are the primary call generators and there are users using these cards successfully in their environment, however some users are not so lucky.

Window 2003 is not supported period; last I heard there will be a patch for 11.5 that will make it compatible.

Speaking of 11.0, this will be your best bet as far as performance.
11.0 does NOT hook the video card, it uses pure API calls!
In my testing of the product when it was in Alpha, Beta and Gold stages it has always out performed previous versions of PCA in both speed and color.

This is again not to say it will fix your issues and improve you life.
You will just have a better chance at getting things to move better.

If all this fails and nothing works or you just don’t want to play anymore then look for another Remote Control application. There are some good ones out there but they just don’t have all the bells and whistles as PCA has. Gotomypc.com is an ok product; I have tested that product as part of my service with Symantec.

It may suite you just fine and it punches the hell out of a firewall, cuts right through it!
If you have Windows XP on both sides then try their Remote Desktop, it works ok as well.